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Monday, July 15, 2013

Ed Notes Online: Teach For America's Civil War: Organizing Resistance Against Teach for America and its Role in Privatization

Ed Notes Online: Teach For America's Civil War: Organizing Resistance Against Teach for America and its Role in Privatization:



Eat a Twinkie, Be a Scab
Are Twinkies the charter schools of the junk food industry? I always thought they sucked anyway. BOYCOTT!!!Twinkies are back after a successful union-busting campaign that placed the blame on union workers for its demise. As the media celebrates their return, they make sure to bury the real story.Here are some resources if you have nothing better to do on a hot summer day.CNBC.com Business takea

Teach For America's Civil War: Organizing Resistance Against Teach for America and its Role in Privatization


This summer, alumni and current teachers are launching the first ever national campaign against the organization.
This weekend former TFAers and others gathered in Chicago to discuss a resistance movement to TFA.

James Ceronsky wrote about it for The American Prospect.

Twenty-four years running, the rap on Teach for America (TFA) is a sampled, re-sampled, burned-out record: The organization’s five-week training program is too short to prepare its recruits to teach, especially in chronically under-served urban and rural districts; corps members only have to commit to teach for two years, which destabilizes schools, undermines the teaching profession, and undercuts teachers unions; and TFA, with the help of its 501(c)4 spin-off, Leadership for Educational Equity, is a leading force in the movement to close “failing” schools, expand charter schools, and tie teachers’ job security to their students’ standardized test scores. Critics burn TFA in internet-effigy across the universe of teacher listservs and labor-friendly blogs. Last July, it earned Onion fame: an op-ed entitled “My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New